Not long ago I wrote an article about the hot new toy in my house full of boys—the overwhelmingly purple Easy-Bake Oven by Hasbro. The article, My Sons’ Easy Bake Oven Shame, really struck a chord with parents, as well as grown-up men and women who have been bothered by the gendering of toys since they were kids and were secretly dying to play with their sisters’ Easy-Bake.

Now one little boy’s big sister is as fed up as I am about the ridiculous gendering of the Easy-Bake Oven. 13 year-old McKenna Pope would like to end the harmful stereotype that “men don’t cook, they work” to open the door for boys like her brother to feel comfortable doing what they love, without Hasbro telling them it’s a “girl thing”.

Joanna Schroeder is the type of working mom who opens her car door and junk spills out all over the ground. She serves as Executive Editor of The Good Men Project and is a freelance writer whose work has appeared on sites like Redbook, Yahoo!, xoJane, MariaShriver.com, TIME.com, and more. Joanna loves playing with her sons, skateboarding with her husband, and hanging out with friends. She just finished her first novel. Follow her shenanigans on Twitter.

Comments

Well I am one for pushing gender equality – I like the big E and I like Equality of all flavours, but not at any cost.

I watched the video and had an uneasy feeling of the kid being pressured – and then at the end there it was – she said it “.. Join Me in My fight for gender equality” – she took possession. It wasn’t his fight or the fight it was her fight.

So – sorry I won’t be signing and supporting, cos from where I’m standing kids are getting used and pressured to be made part of agendas and as a good guy I don’t do it , I don’t support it and I don’t care how big bad or important the cause – you don’t have true advance by abuse and misrepresentation and forcing kids to say things on camera in the hope it will make you look good.

There’s a bit of a dilemma here. Boys are getting the message that cooking is for girls and not boys, so it’s lame that the ovens are colored purple or have lots of flowers on them. It would be in Hasbro’s best interest to expand their marketing to boys. However, just selling ovens that have racing stripes or dinosaurs or something stereotypically “boyish” on them is just the flip side of the stupid gender division. Why not just ignore the color scheme one way or the other and buy one if your kid wants one?

Not buying it because it’s decorated as “feminine,” and only if it’s decorated as “masculine” or neutral is not a real solution. Caring too much how it looks is a big part of the problem.

How do you know that? How do you know she got him to say that and the boy doesn’t truly want an Easy-Bake Oven? Some boys do, in fact, want one. From the video the sister just asks her brother questions and he tells her how he feels. In any case, how does any of this negate the overall message and mission of the video? Wether this boy does or does not really want one, even though he did seem to be having a good time cooking, does that ultimately diminish the heart of what the brother and sister are advocating for? I mean, I don’t think so. There seems to be a good deal of assumption coming from you and mediahound.

Of course there are boys that want one. It’s not his desire for an oven that I question. It’s her putting him on camera just to chirp it up that I question (and even then I’m really not trying to say that she shouldn’t be doing it, just that I find it odd).

Wether this boy does or does not really want one, even though he did seem to be having a good time cooking, does that ultimately diminish the heart of what the brother and sister are advocating for?
Possibly. I’m sure I’m not the only person that thinks the sincerity of a cause or the reasoning behind it could diminish the cause itself.

There seems to be a good deal of assumption coming from you and mediahound.
Nope.

Wether this boy does or does not really want one, even though he did seem to be having a good time cooking, does that ultimately diminish the heart of what the brother and sister are advocating for?

If the kid didn’t want one – but was being used to further another person’s agenda – where does the piece of string start and stop?

I was once asked by a woman with a 3 month old baby in her arms, If I thought it would be too much if she went up to women entering an abortion clinic and asking if they wished to murder her baby? That was in Northern Ireland. My response was, it would be terrorism with the baby used as an incendiary device, and if she attempted it, I would call social services and report child abuse… and make it stick!

I’m quite conservative on the abortion front – so many would think her view of abusing a child to stop an abortion was a great idea and I would be more likely to agree. Big Mistake – the old two wrongs don’t make a right is also one I know well.

It’s shocking what some people will do and even think A O K when they want to make a point. And sorry if me being a good guy involves me saying Hold on a second this is not right when I see kids being used and quite possibly manipulated for other people’s agendas. Could be Youtube, in public, at home… I’m an equal opportunities guy, so I recognise that abuse is not venue specific – It’s Abuser driven and global.

I call it when I see it and not when it’s convenient for agendas.

If the video was how he liked the easy bake and there was one at daddies house but not mommies – and then you have daddy explaining how this proves that kids want to bake with daddies and everyone should agree and sign a petition …. sorry – but – I call it as I see it, and what I see here stinks. (By the way I changed the sexes there – because a video matching the one described has featured on YouTube – except it was mommie attempting to maker the kid say daddies were bad).

It’s also disturbing that a young women is portrayed as using kids for her own agendas areound gender, and you ahve to wonder where she has been getting the idea that using people in that way is 1) socially acceptable 2) normal 3) good for advancing gender and reducing discrimination?

Should I start to wonder how a child herself has been treated and what has been said for such patterns of conduct to be but on YouTube by her and for her to think it’s great … and she’s measuring her self worth by a petition that any monkey banging on a keyboard can sign by accident?

As I said “I watched the video and had an uneasy feeling of the kid being pressured…” I may be queer, single and have no kids, but I do deal with them all the time – but when you counsel in abuse and trauma it’s shocking how well you get to known kids – and it’s not at all surprising what some wished stayed out of sight and on the editing room floor!

It all looks the same and all you need is the Stock Footage to fill in the gaps! Abuse all too often is accompanied by a gross lack of imagination, coupled with social blindness and self-entitlement. It’s the same patterns over and over for a reason. It’s one of the reasons abuse if so shocking becasue the patterns are so well known…… and that means too many turning a blind eye and allowing the abuse because it’s too much trouble to point out it’s not on the Agenda.

Subscribe to email updates

Featured Content

The countless deaths of unarmed black men by police, coupled with persistent activism from communities of color, has forced the conversation of race on America, causing officials to reevaluate, among many things, how policing is done.

Welcome to Portraits of Fatherhood: We’re telling the story of today’s dads. __ There is no better place to witness the changing roles of men and women in the larger culture than through the lens[Read More…]